What price beauty?

Things die. Rabbits come. Grasshoppers multiply. And rain is a constant tease, pouring down in Denver for brief, steamy, rainbow-punctuated interludes, spurning the desperate pleas of the rest of the landscape.

Is there anything as poignant as a parched cherry tomato plant, its shriveled leaves furling as it dessicates after setting its first few strings of fruit? I doubt it, but if there is, maybe it’s a pot with a garlic or lavender carefully seeded or dug up and sent out into the world, only to sit neglected while we struggle for the time to give it a proper home.

We pour hope and sweat and money and time into this thing we call gardening, whether we do it to assist our physical survival or the survival of our souls. And when something fails, there is a heartbreak that strikes deeper than mere disappointment. There is little perfection and almost no certainty, and the world does not exactly stop its whirling round to hand us, stretched out on a silver platter, the time to give root to our dreams.

Or the money. My achingly beautiful plan for backyard bliss? Well, my landscaper stopped estimating it when his figures totaled twice what my budget allowed. This is not uncommon. Plants cost, and stone is not cheap, nor is labor or the fuel to bring it to a site. The plan is solid. But the cost? Not in my universe of the possible right now. So my back yard remains as it was last year — actually, more weed-choked than last year, since I held off on planting beds that will be ripped out for the renovation. While my brain balked and whirled and scurried for solutions and bonded with calculators and schemes for additional income, summer arrived. My tolerance for heat is not what it once was, but I am the muscle that will be tearing out the past mistakes of this tiny piece of land. Those beds will come out, piece by piece; perhaps the chard that’s now gone to seed will gift me with seeds for a second crop this fall, in the one part of my dream backyard that I will be able to execute.

[photopress:IMG_2405_1.JPG,full,pp_image]

I think the thing to do in dry summers like this one is to live like a tough desert plants — like this sedum, which has grown at my backporch downspout every year I’ve lived here. The gifts of water it gets are accidental and unpredictable — a splash from the dogs’ drinking dish when I change it, or the water from their Paw Plunger when they’ve managed to get their feet dirty. And yet it blooms, those years when it gets enough water. It blooms abundantly in its scruffy, untrendy, militantly lowbrow fashion. It expects nothing, accepts what I can spare for it, is grateful for whatever it gets.

Becky Hensley is the co-founder of Share Denver - a community craft space in Park Hill. She's also the proud Ninja-in Chief of the Denver Craft Ninjas -- a women’s crafting collective dedicated to keeping the DIY spirit alive through laughter, shared skills, and cocktails.

Colorado native Mark Montano is an international designer, artist, author and television personality. He has appeared on TLC’s “While You Were Out” and “10 Years Younger,” as well as “My Celebrity Home” on the Style Network, “She’s Moving In” on We TV, “The Tony Danza Show” on ABC, and “My Home 2.0” on Fox.